a brief intro to Kane

1. Sarah Kane
Berna Bozdağ

2. 1. The importance of shock in language and stage imagery, as part of a rejection of ―political correctness
2. The investment in cruelty as subject matter and as part of the audience‘s viewing experience
3. An exploration of gender roles and sexual mores, seen most often in an obsession with fathers and father-
figures which is representative of the so-called crisis of masculinity
4. The move away from large political plays, the state of England‘ plays, towards smaller-cast works that focus on
individual struggles
5. The rejection of characters who can be clearly distinguished as either victim or oppressor; victims can be
complicit in their own oppression and oppressors also suffers as victims
6. The rejection of characters as spokespeople for certain political ideologies or as stand-ins for a moral authorial
presence, a tendency found in the critical realist tradition of the 1970s and 80s
7. An uneasiness with labels such as minority‘ or feminist,‘ in part as a way of separating themselves from the issue-
based work of many 1980s writers and theatre companies
8. In the wake of the Communism‘s collapse and the disintegration of Left and Right political oppositions, a general
scepticism toward partisan politics of any stripe
9. A wide-spread experimentation with form and style, in part inspired by European and American theatre
10. The acceptance of theatre‘s role as a commodity, marked by an investment in coolness‘ and celebrity, with no
pretense to see theatre as outside of, or opposed to, popular culture and mass media; seen most notably in the
appropriation of a pop music sensibility. ( Urban qtd in Kümbet 15)
Originally, the term ―in-yer-face comes from ―American sports journalism during the mid-seventies, and gradually
seeped into more mainstream slang over the following decade (Kümbet 9)
IN-YER FACE THEATRE:

3. Sarah Kane • She was born in 1971, died 1999 at the age
of 28
• Educated at University of Bristol, in the
field of drama.
• She wrote her first play, Blasted in 1995
when she was 23 and
an MA student at University of Birmingham
• She was influenced by Beckett, Howard
Barker, Harold Pinter, Edward Bond.
• «Between 1995 and 1999 she wrote five
plays and a short film for BBC. Her texts
deal with themes of destructive love,
sexual craving, pain, physical and
psychological dimensions of cruelty, issues
of distress, melancholia and death» (Biçer
76).
For Ravenhill’s ideas on her: https://www.theguardian.com/stage/2005/oct/12/theatre
https://www.independent.co.uk/arts-entertainment/obituary-sarah-kane-1072624.html
https://www.theguardian.com/stage/2006/oct/28/theatre.stage

4. Her theatre:
• «explores the possibility of change acknowledging that the world is
violent» (Biçer 76).
• «broke down the traditional dramatic methods of classical
dramaturgy such as linear sequence of time, creating definitive
characters whose names, genders are stated, and recognizable plot;
three unities of time, place and action, cause and effect connection;
using media images on stage, musicalization, playing with the density
of signs, non-hierarchy, physicality, interruption of the real Kane’s
texts demonstrates how the postdramatic aesthetics can be
experimented with onstage» (76).

5. BLASTED (1995)-The play seems to be a realistic one at the beginning. With the intrusion of The Soldier,
we see some postdramatic elements.
Like Beckett’s What Where Kane divides the scene into Spring, Summer, Autumn,
Winter. (Sierz 100)
-Similar to Endgame, Ian’s head can be seen from a whole. At the very end, Kane tupsy
turvies master slave relationship between Ian and Cate, as Ian is fed by her. Cate is
capable of surviving, which is important.
-Bosnian War (Ian& soldier- eye gouging/a football fan did it).
- Criticism on corruptness of media.
-economic use of language, she experiments with dialogue.

7. Corruptness of outer world and its impact on
the individual:
Sierz 101

8. KANE QTD IN SIERZ 105-
106

9. 4.48 Psychosis
«I am sad
I feel that the future is hopeless and that things
cannot improve
I am bored and dissatisfied with everything I am a
complete failure as a person
I am guilty, I am being punished I would like to kill
myself I used to be able to cry but now I am beyond
tears
I have lost interest in other people
I can't make decisions
I can't eat I can't sleep I can't think
I cannot overcome my loneliness, my fear, my disgust
I am fat
I cannot write
I cannot love»

10. Major elements:
«For me the form did exactly mirror the
content. And for me the form is the meaning
of the play, which is that people’s lives are
thrown into complete chaos with absolutely
no warning whatsoever.» (Kane qtd in
Rebellato, 1998)
• There are multiple voices in the play but none of them is named,
there is no character portrayal.
• The play is not seperated into scenes or acts. It just flows.
• Narrative voice switches to first person to third person time to time.
• It is like a long poem
• There are no stage directions or anything that can guide the reader
• It is considered as a suicide note. We read about a patient talking
and everything around her is in fragments.
• Doctor and patient relationship is played on.
• Kane’s style in the play resembles to Postdramatic theatre, she
moves away from the In-Yer-Face phase totally.
• There are elements of Theatre of the Absurd, as there are
repetitions and the circular plot.

11. The dialogue between
the doctor and patient
resemles to an internal
monologue. Silences are
important.
– Have you made any plans?
– Take an overdose, slash my wrists then hang
myself.
– All those things together?
– It couldn't possibly be misconstrued as a cry for
help.
(Silence.)
– It wouldn't work.
– Of course it would.

12. • There is fragmentation, duality and it cannot be mended. Fragmentation is
closely linked to the form, but it is a theme in the play as well.
«Body and soul can never be married» (Kane 8)
• Return to the roots bear an importance
«After 4.48 I shall not speak again. I have reached the end of his dreary and
repugnant tale of a sense interned in an alien carcass and lumpen by the
malignant spirit of the moral majority. I have been dead for a long time. Back
to my roots» (Kane 9)
• Unreturned love, loneliness, suicidal thoughts are recurring motives
throughout the play.

13. Theme of
unreturned
love/ cruelty
of love is
important. (
Crave,
Cleansed
and
Phaedra’s
Love.)
• «I dread the loss of her I've never touched love
keeps me a slave in a cage of tears I gnaw my
tongue with which to her I can never speak I miss a
woman who was never born I kiss a woman across
the years that say we shall never meet» ( Kane 12)
• The voice who narrates his/her own story seeks
death and harms his/her body.

14. • Kane makes
use of
intertextual
elements
including
Bible.
«My love, my love, why have you forsaken me? She is
the couching place where I never shall lie and there's
no meaning to life in the light of my loss» (Kane 13)
The narrator medication to be cured and s/he is totally
cynical towards it.
The play questions what is normal/abnormal.
«Embrace beautiful lies – the chronic insanity of the
sane the wrenching begins» (Kane 20)
We see a list of meds and informed that the narrator
has severe memory loss now, not reacting to her
surrounding (Kane 16).

15. There are elements
that can be
considered as
autobiographical in
the play.
• After doing an overdose, Kane is found
and saved, but this time she suicided
by hanging herself by her shoelaces.
«Patient declined Seroxat.
Hypochondria – cites spasmodic blinking
and severe memory loss as evidence of
tardive dyskinesia and tardive dementia.
Refused all further treatment.
100 aspirin and one bottle of Bulgarian
Cabernet Sauvignon, 1986. Patient woke
up in a pool of vomit and said 'Sleep with
a dog and rise full of fleas.' Severe
stomach pain. No other reaction.» (Kane
17)

16. The outer
world and its
shocks are
affecting the
speaker,
dismantling
him/her.
• I gassed the Jews, I killed the Kurds, I bombed the
Arabs, I fucked small children while they begged for
mercy, the killing fields are mine, everyone left the
party because of me, I'll suck your fucking eyes out
sent them to your mother in a box and when I die
I'm going to be reincarnated as your child only fifty
times worse and as mad as all fuck I'm going to
make your life a living fucking hell I REFUSE I
REFUSE I REFUSE LOOK AWAY FROM ME – It's all
right. – LOOK AWAY FROM ME – It's all right. I'm
here. – Look away from me. (The two voices are
totally mingled).

17. • Appereance of stark light is related to death
and apocalpyse, in Crave, 4.48 and Blasted
«Remember the light and believe the light.
Nothing matters more. Stop judging by
appearances and make a right judgement.»
(4.48 21)

18. • We have repetitions.
«flash flicker slash burn wring press dab slash flash flicker punch
burn float flicker dab flicker punch flicker flash burn dab press
wring press punch flicker float burn flash flicker burn» 4.48 (22)
• We see the Otherized subject, coming to the center. The play
reveals the normalization process done to the abnormal Other.
S/he prefers to be cured:
• «to draw close and enjoyably reciprocate with another
to converse in a friendly manner, to tell stories, exchange
sentiments, ideas, secrets to communicate, to converse to laugh
and make jokes
to win affection of desired Other
to adhere and remain loyal to Other
to enjoy sensuous experiences with cathected Other» (Kane 25)

19. The master and the slave
continuously switches
roles. The doctor
becomes the patient.
-I fucking hate this job and I need my friends to be
sane.
(Silence.)
-I'm sorry.
-It's not my fault.
-I'm sorry, that was a mistake.
-It's not my fault.
-No. It's not your fault. I'm sorry

20. It is like a suicide note:
«Please don't cut me up to find out how I died
I'll tell you how I died
One hundred Lofepramine, forty five Zopiclone, twenty
five Temazepam, and twenty Melleril
Everything I had swallowed slit hung it is done» (Kane 30)
• Ends in a very interesting way, putting the real and
unreal together:
«Please open the curtains» (Kane 35)

21. CLEANSED (1998) • Sarah Kane’s third text Cleansed in which we
encounter the postdramatic aesthetics more
clearly is first staged at Royal Court Downstairs
in April 1998. It is about a group of people
living in a university campus, an institution, or
a concentration camp who try to protect
themselves through love
• Gutcher remarks that Cleansed is the crucial
turning-point between Kane’s different theatre
techniques. In her first two plays, Blasted and
Phaedra’s Love, the formal dramatic categories
are still ensured. Both plays are divided into
scenes, have are recognizable plot, an action,
indicated by abundant stage directions, and
distinguishable characters whose names and
gender are clearly stated. With Cleansed Kane
took the first step into the direction of
dissolving boundaries (qtd in Biçer)

22. • Blasted and Cleansed had been conceived as the first
two parts of a trilogy of plays, the last of which was to
be concerned with nuclear devastation ( Greig qtd in
Kümbet 26)
• Characters: Tinker (doctor/drug dealer), Graham &
Grace (brother/sister), Rod& Carl
• Setting: at a university, seasons and weather change
the beginning of the play has realistic elements
(Blasted), Kane changes her style throughout the play, it
becomes more postmodern.
• Synestesia (colors)
Scene III-White room.
Scene IV-Red room. (element of violence begins. Tinker
cuts Carl’s tongue)
…

23. • Tinker changes his role from doctor to drug
dealer. His identity is not clear.
• Grace lost her brother because of an
overdose. (we are not sure if he was an
addict/medicated by his doctor)
• Cross-dressing, Grace identifies herself
with dead Graham, they have an incest
affair. At the end of the play, she becomes
him. No stable identity. Queer elements.
• Theme of suicide, love torments the
characters.
• Grace has hysteria like Cate in Blasted
• Although the events do not follow a straight
sequence, and the scenes are arranged in a non-
linear pattern, the events are interwoven in the
end. There are four different symbolic stories in
the play (Kümbet 30).
(Kane 13)

24. Stage directions are extremely
interesting/ hard for the director to put on
stage.
(Kane 14)
(Kane 27)
(Kane 30)

25. Kane qtd in Sierz (115)

26. Kane’s sources:
• Büchner’s Woyzeck, Strindberg’s The Ghost Sonata, Orwell’s 1984
• It discusses identity and sexuality, tupsy turvies the binaries.
SIERZ 117
Tinker is the voice of normativity, oppression. It is significant to see
him in the role of doctor& torturer& drug dealer at the same time.
He is always watching them.
(Kane 32)

27. Phaedra’s Love
(1996)
• Directed by Kane.
• She read Seneca’s Phaedra only for once
and she «wanted to keep the classical
concerns of Greek theatre- love, hate,
death, revenge, suicide- but use a
contemporary urban poetry (Sierz 109)
• Albert Camus’s The Outsider was an
important influence for Kane (109).

28. (Kane 65)
(Kane 74)
• Hippolytus, who stands for bodily excess and
capitalist waste, belongs to the
dysfunctional Royal family.
• His actions displays his addiction and
dependency on capitalist waste culture.
• He is inactive, he does not enjoy anything.
• Theme of incest

29. CRAVE (1998)
• Crave is the culmination of Kane’s quest to marry form and
content. The text indicates where the speech begins, but
doesn’t show where it ends, and doesn’t assign them to
clearly named characters
• The play examines the expression of memory suspended in
the moment of the present and hovering on the brink of
forgetting. Four unnamed voices blend in a symphonic
effect to express the memory of love, loss, pain, and silence
(141)
• Criticism of her first plays often included concerns that Kane
was incapable of producing a play of any literary merit.
Crave appears to be an answer to those jeers. Crave is a
poetic piece, at times more a piece of poetry in
performance than a play, in which Kane has purposely
immobilized her characters

30. • “Beckett was the first dramatist to tantalize his
audience with scraps of information, unmistakably
vital to his characters’ experience yet impossible
to position exactly in their story. Kane’s plays
exhibit something of that same sensibility…”
(Kingston qtd in Biçer 79)
• The voices are never named during the play; the
exception is B being referred to as ‘David’ by M
and C. Despite the seemingly random barrage of
fragmented or disconnected language, distinct
narratives emerge through the collage of
interlocking lines, which at times seem to be in
dialogue with each other (79).

31. WORKS CITED:
• Biçer, Ahmet Gökhan. «Sarah Kane’s Postdramatic Strategies in
Blasted,Cleansed and Crave» Uluslararası Sosyal Araştırmalar
Dergisi. 4.17. p: 75-80
• Kane, Sarah. Complete Plays. London: Methuen Drama,2001.
• Kümbet, Pelin. A DELEUZIAN READING OF SARAH KANE'S
CLEANSED, CRAVE, AND 4.48 PSYCHOSIS. 2010 Hacettepe
University, MA Dissertation.
https://tez.yok.gov.tr/UlusalTezMerkezi/tezSorguSonucYeni.jsp
• Sierz, Aleks In-Yer-Face Theatre: British Drama Today. London:
Faber&Faber, 2000